This is the blog of China defense, where professional analysts and serious defense enthusiasts share findings on a rising military power.

Monday, June 01, 2015

QJG02 14.5mm AAA in Iraq

It is a common sight now a day to find a Chinese weapon on news photos out of Middle East war zones. Now it seems that the North Korean is jumping into the fray with their Type73 light machine gun export. If the Type73 looks like a blast from the past, well, it is based on the old and proven ZB vz. 26 of the WWII fame after all.

Norinco QJG02 14.5mm AAA in Iraq

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Photos of the day: Kurdish HJ-8 ATGM in action

While the source of this Chinese ATGM remains unknown -- one thing is
for certain -- Chinese arsenal is making its way to the middle east
war zones, one way or the other.

August 12, 2013
Arms Shipments Seen From Sudan to Syria Rebels
By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

Syrian
rebels, frustrated by the West’s reluctance to provide arms, have found
a supplier in an unlikely source: Sudan, a country that has been under
international arms embargoes and maintains close ties with a stalwart
backer of the Syrian government, Iran.

In deals
that have not been publicly acknowledged, Western officials and Syrian
rebels say, Sudan’s government sold Sudanese- and Chinese-made arms to
Qatar, which arranged delivery through Turkey to the rebels.

The
shipments included antiaircraft missiles and newly manufactured
small-arms cartridges, which were seen on the battlefield in Syria — all
of which have helped the rebels combat the Syrian government’s
better-armed forces and loyalist militias.

Emerging
evidence that Sudan has fed the secret arms pipeline to rebels adds to a
growing body of knowledge about where the opposition to President
Bashar al-Assad of Syria is getting its military equipment, often paid
for by Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia or other
sympathetic donors.

While it is unclear how pivotal the
weapons have been in the two-year-old civil war, they have helped
sustain the opposition against government forces emboldened by aid from
Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

Sudan’s involvement adds
yet another complication to a civil war that has long defied a
diplomatic resolution. The battle has evolved into a proxy fight for
regional influence between global powers, regional players and religious
sects. In Sudan’s case, it has a connection with the majority Sunni
rebels, and a potentially lucrative financial stake in prosecuting the
war.

But Sudan’s decision to provide arms to the rebels
— bucking its own international supporters and helping to cement its
reputation for fueling conflict — reflects a politically risky balancing
act. Sudan maintains close economic and diplomatic ties to Iran and
China.

Both nations have provided military and
technical assistance to Sudan’s state-run arms industry and might see
sales of its weapons by Sudan to help rebels in Syria as an unwanted
outcome of their collaboration with Khartoum, or even as a betrayal.

In
interviews, Sudanese officials denied helping arm either side in the
Syrian war. “Sudan has not sent weapons to Syria,” said Imad Sid Ahmad,
the press secretary for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Al-Sawarmi
Khalid Saad, a spokesman for the Sudanese armed forces, added that the
allegations defied common sense, except perhaps as a smear.

“We
have no interest in supporting groups in Syria, especially if the
outcome of the fighting is not clear,” Mr. Saad said. “These allegations
are meant to harm our relations with countries Sudan has good relations
with.”

A Qatari official said he had no information about a role by his country in procuring or moving military equipment from Sudan.

Sudan
has a history of providing weapons to armed groups while publicly
denying its hand in such transfers. Its arms or ammunition has turned up
in South Sudan, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Chad, Kenya, Guinea, Mali and
Uganda, said Jonah Leff, a Sudan analyst for the Small Arms Survey, a
research project. It has provided weapons to Joseph Kony’s Lord’s
Resistance Army; rebels in Libya; and the janjaweed, the pro-government
militias that are accused of a campaign of atrocities in Darfur.

“Sudan
has positioned itself to be a major global arms supplier whose wares
have reached several conflict zones, including the Syrian rebels,” said
one American official who is familiar with the shipments to Turkey.

Western
analysts and officials said Sudan’s clandestine participation in arming
rebels in Syria suggests inherent tensions in Mr. Bashir’s foreign
policy, which broadly supports Sunni Islamist movements while
maintaining a valued relationship with the Shiite theocracy in Iran.

Other officials suggested that a simple motive was at work — money. Sudan is struggling with a severe economic crisis.

“Qatar
has been paying a pretty penny for weapons, with few questions asked,”
said one American official familiar with the transfers. “Once word gets
out that other countries have opened their depots and have been well
paid, that can be an incentive.”

Analysts suspect that
Sudan has sold several other classes of weapons to the rebels, including
Chinese-made antimateriel sniper rifles and antitank missiles, all of
which have made debuts in the war this year but whose immediate sources
have been uncertain.

Two American officials said
Ukrainian-flagged aircraft had delivered the shipments. Air traffic
control data from an aviation official in the region shows that at least
three Ukrainian aviation transport companies flew military-style cargo
planes this year from Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, to a military and
civilian airfield in western Turkey. In telephone interviews, officials
at two firms denied carrying arms; the third firm did not answer calls
on Monday.

Mr. Ahmad, the Sudanese presidential
spokesman, suggested that if Sudan’s weapons were seen with Syria’s
rebels, perhaps Libya had provided them.

Sudan, he
said, has admitted sending arms during the 2011 war to oust Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi. Libya’s new leaders have publicly thanked Sudan. Libya has
since been a busy supplier of the weapons to rebels in Syria.

However,
that would not explain the Sudanese-made 7.62x39-millimeter ammunition
documented by The New York Times this year in rebel possession near the
Syrian city of Idlib.

The ammunition, according to its
stamped markings, was made in Sudan in 2012 — after the war in Libya had
ended. It was used by Soquor al-Sham, an Islamist group that recognizes
the Western-supported Syrian National Coalition’s military command.

When
told that the newly produced Sudanese cartridges were photographed with
Syrian rebels, Mr. Saad, the Sudanese military spokesman, was
dismissive. “Pictures can be fabricated,” he said. “That is not
evidence.”

Sudan’s suggestion that any of its weapons
in Syria had been provided by Libya also would not explain the presence
of Chinese-made FN-6 antiaircraft missiles in Syrian rebel units.
Neither the Qaddafi loyalists nor the rebels in Libya were known to
possess those weapons in 2011, analysts who track missile proliferation
said.

The movements of FN-6s have been at the center of one of the stranger arms-trafficking schemes in the civil war.

The
weapons, which fire a heat-seeking missile from a shoulder launcher,
gained nonproliferation specialists’ immediate attention when they
showed up in rebel videos early this year. Syria’s military was not
known to stock them, and their presence in northern Syria strongly
suggested that they were being brought to rebels via black markets, and
perhaps with the consent of the authorities in Turkey.

After
the missiles were shown destroying Syrian military helicopters, the
matter took an unusual turn when a state-controlled newspaper in China,
apparently acting on a marketing impulse, lauded the missile’s
performance. “The kills are proof that the FN-6 is reliable and
user-friendly, because rebel fighters are generally not well trained in
operating missile systems,” the newspaper, Global Times, quoted a
Chinese aviation analyst as saying.

The successful
attacks on Syria’s helicopters by Chinese missiles brought “publicity”
that “will raise the image of Chinese defense products on the
international arms trade market,” the newspaper wrote.

The praise proved premature.

As
the missiles were put to wider use, rebels began to complain, saying
that more often than not they failed to fire or to lock on targets. One
rebel commander, Abu Bashar, who coordinates fighting in Aleppo and
Idlib Provinces, called the missiles, which he said had gone to Turkey
from Sudan and had been provided to rebels by a Qatari intelligence
officer, a disappointment.

“Most of the FN-6s that we
got didn’t work,” he said. He said two of them had exploded as they were
fired, killing two rebels and wounding four others.

Detailed
photos of one of the FN-6 missile tubes, provided by a Syrian with
access to the weapons, showed that someone had taken steps to obscure
its origin. Stenciled markings, the photos showed, had been covered with
spray paint. Such markings typically include a missile’s serial number,
lot number, manufacturer code and year of production.

Rebels
said that before they were provided with the missiles, months ago, they
had already been painted, either by the seller, shipper or middlemen,
in a crude effort to make tracing the missiles more difficult.

Reporting
was contributed by Andrew E. Kramer, Nikolay Khalip and Andrew Roth
from Moscow; Robert F. Worth from Washington; Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul;
Nicholas Kulish from Nairobi, Kenya; Isma’il Kushkush from Khartoum,
Sudan; and Karam Shoumali from Turkey and Syria.

Friday, April 05, 2013

The media is awash with "news" of how the Syrian rebels now have the
AS50 Accuracy International .50 caliber sniper rifle...but they don't.

Many Western media sources have erroneously identified the video in this
video as an AS50. However, the rifle is in fact a Chinese M99 sniper
rifle in 12.7x108mm:

If you were a member of the world's premier internet Chinese military
discussion, China-Defense.com Forum, you would have known weeks ago that
the Syrian rebel forces had Chinese M99 .50 caliber sniper rifles.
Forum members generally agree Sudan is the most likely source of the
rifles.

M99 is visually similar to AS50, but is a different weapon. The AI is
like a FAL while the M99 is more like an M-16. M99 is a direct gas,
rotating bolt action, whereas the AS50 is a short stroke, tilting bolt
action. The M99 is also 2 kg lighter than AS50.